Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of
the constantly-running reality show which has taken the country by
storm, the 24-7 tequila hangover that no one can stop watching, the
only show on television whose highlights run on the evening news
every day.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of the constantly-running reality show which has taken the country by storm, the 24-7 tequila hangover that no one can stop watching, the only show on television whose highlights run on the evening news every day.
Yes folks, it’s time for “America Idle” and you’re all contestants, like it or not.
Now, we know the ratings are high because so many of you have nothing to keep you from watching: perhaps your work hours have been cut back, you’re not out at the mall spending any money, and you’re surely not searching the Internet for the best price on a spiffy new fully-loaded SUV to impress your friends with.
You’re just not in the mood to drop a fast $125 for a round of golf at the fancy-shmancy local course, your home remodeling project has been put on hold while you rethink whether solid granite countertops for the wet-bar of the billiard room is really a necessity in light of current conditions, and there isn’t much point in whiling away your time making vacation plans for the foreseeable future.
In short, what we have here is a whole country full of people who are simultaneously perpetrators, spectators and victims – the rough economic equivalent of a public execution carried out by a circular firing squad.
Isn’t it amazing how we’re all harming each other just by doing as little as possible?
Here we are trying to be restrained, tighten our belts, keep our heads down, don’t do anything financially stupid, and the consequence of minding our own business is the bankruptcy of everybody else’s business.
Everyone needs us to spend money we don’t have to buy stuff we don’t need so they’ll have money to buy stuff from us so we’ll have money to spend to buy… See, trying to make sense out of situations like this is just a short road to chaos – it can’t be done.
So our belated but earnest attempt to become financially responsible in the honest if naïve belief that this would be a good thing in light of current regrettable conditions creates a cascading disaster that renders the very responsibility we seek naught but a cruel unattainable illusion. And they say irony is dead.
There’s no doubt a lesson here, as there usually is when big forces of history collide, and it might be – warning: this could make your brain hurt – that learning to get by on only what we really need isn’t what we really need; in fact, it creates new needs.
Turns out we all need each other, not in the New Age, group-hug, takes-a-village sappy kind of way, but in a much more gritty dog-feed-dog kind of way; we all need to buy stuff from each other, to use each other’s services, to pass around the money.
We’re not going to let a dollar leave our hands if we’re afraid it won’t come back, but fear-based frugality is ultimately just slow suicide. To paraphrase a 60s song much beloved in certain circles, don’t Bogart that buck my friend, pass it over to me.
In the whole history of civilization, until quite recently, the vast majority of people were rural and almost entirely self-sufficient, growing and making most of what they needed, but those days are gone forever.
Between the population explosion and the advances of technology, we just can’t keep everybody employed making mere necessities. The operative paradigm history has handed us compels the conclusion that – are you ready? – we need to have a lot of stuff we don’t need.
So please, in the interests of a healthy and prosperous society don’t get too used to the idea of hunkering down and sticking to the basics.
It’s the frills, the gimmicks and the toys that keep the economy afloat, that keep us and our neighbors working and spending.
As it almost says in the Good Book, man does not live by bread alone; there must also be big-screen TVs and Caribbean cruises and Blackberries and single-malt Scotch and Playstation 3s and …
Ironic, isn’t it?
